Smart home for everyone means something different. For some, it is the control of lighting and roller blinds, while for others, it is a matter of saving money with a better heating management. Still others want every possible device in the house to be connected and controlled by one system. This group includes the most engaged users of FIBARO Home Center, who want to create their unconventional ideas and share their own solutions. It is for them and for those who want to use the results of this work that we have made the FIBARO Marketplace available.
What is Marketplace and what does it really offer?
FIBARO Marketplace gives developers the ability to share extensions to the Home Center with other users. There are currently two types of enhancements available to extend smart home capabilities: virtual devices and scenes. Virtual devices enable connection to the Home Center of devices and services that are not supported by the Home Center unit as a standard. On the other hand, the scenes are a kind of tailor-made apps that implement advanced functionalities tailored to specific needs or hardware configurations.
Home Automation is only just beginning its way to the ground, so there are a lot of solutions, standards and protocols that are not always compatible. Thanks to combination of openness and possibility of FIBARO Home Center advanced personalization and the extraordinary creativity of our users, there are lots of unique solutions that improve functionning of many smart homes. For advanced users sky is the limit and those more comfortable can simply benefit from effects of their work.
The concept of home automation
It happens very often that our users want to automate and integrate an appliance that is not supported by our smart home environment. Often such a device is ment to be part of a larger sequence or scene. There are many reasons for automation, but the most important one is the need to use all of already possesed devices in a new and unconventional way.
When it comes to home automation, it is most often a simple systems and diagrams that allow you to remotely control the operation of individual devices. This is usually done via a mobile application or other interface. A simple automation as the remote switching on and off of devices can satisfy many of us. But the more you have, the more you want…
In our opinion, a smart home system should be adjusted as much as possible to the needs of the residents of a specific house. Houses differ in size, layout and other aspects. If we face different needs and expectations of its users, it becomes clear that it is not possible to create a standard system that would respond to all these requirements right after unboxing.
Instead, it is possible to build a system that would engage users in making their personalized systems complete. Every user of the FIBARO System has this possibility, starting from the less advanced, through the more experienced – all kinds of geeks and nerds who want to set up their most crazy ideas. At this point, we give them that chance to do so.
The community of smart home users
Scenes and virtual devices for the Home Center are created with LUA language. It is relatively easy to learn, it forgives errors and allows you to write very complex actions in a concise form. From the point of view of home automation quality, it is important to set efficient and simple code bit not to overload the memory and processor of Home Center unit.
If you would like to start your adventure with integration, we encourage you to use our tutorial and documentation (registration required) which explain in a simple way what the creation of virtual devices and scenes is all about.
International community around the FIBARO brand is very committed to creating new solutions. Members share their ideas and projects practically every day. So far, they have used Internet forums for this purpose which, although they are a powerful tool, still require time to find the best solutions among all the topics. This also means the use of multiple foreign forums which significantly complicates and extends the search time.
These challenges have led to the development of a dedicated tool to help creators share the fruits of their work in an easy way and to enable less advanced users to use them.
Marketplace
Marketplace is a tool that allows you to quickly find and download the most interesting virtual devices and scenes you’ve been looking for. The platform resembles app store that are known from mobile devices. Each element is described in a consistent and coherent way which significantly facilitates finding the desired solution. There is no need to search for this information on your own and dig through long discussions in forums.
Marketplace is a simple and transparent service. A scene or a virtual device seem interesting to you? Just a few clicks away and you can enjoy the greater functionality of your smart home system.
FIBARO team ensures that all the elements coming to Marketplace are broadly described so that there is no doubt to the purpose and method of operation of the given item. Verification is also a part of the community environment which assesses each other’s ideas and rates individual solutions. Selected elements are marked with the FIBARO Choice signature which informs about a stable, high quality solution. Next post will present a selection of the most interesting items from the Marketplace which will certainly appeal to the more demanding users of the FIBARO System.